This invention relates to digital communications, and more particularly to systems and methods for jointly demodulating a received signal.
Joint demodulation is widely used to detect two or more signals that are received over a common channel. For example, joint demodulation may be used to detect a desired signal from a received signal that includes an interfering signal as well. In joint demodulation, the desired signal and the interfering signal are both demodulated based on information concerning the desired signal and the interfering signal, so as to obtain a better estimate of the desired signal.
Two-user joint demodulation for IS-136 TDMA wireless communication terminals has been proposed for cancellation of a dominant interfering signal, also referred to as an “interferer”, under the assumptions of a flat, slow fading downlink environment. By subtracting off the interfering signal, the desired signal's bit error-rate can be improved. This occurs since both the channel and symbol data corresponding to the interferer generally are not perfectly correlated to the desired signal, allowing separation of the two signals. Joint demodulation thus may rely upon the ability to estimate the channel and perform symbol detection for each user across the data slot.
For the joint demodulation approach used for the IS-136 system, estimation of the initial channel response generally is performed in the same manner as in conventional single-user demodulation since the synchronization (sync) sequence for the desired signal is known. However, since the interferer sync word generally is unknown, a semi-blind technique may be used to find an estimate of the sample-position offset and the initial channel response of the interferer. Joint detection of the two users' symbol data then may be performed, for example using per-survivor processing using LMS tracking of the channel responses for each user.
A concern in the implementation of joint demodulation is the impact that frequency offset of the users' signals will have on the ability to cancel interference. In single-user demodulation, the carrier frequency of the received signal may be offset from the assumed carrier frequency, for example due to the limited tolerance of the oscillators in the base station and/or wireless terminal. Correcting for this frequency offset is typically a two-step Automatic Frequency Control (AFC) process, that includes initial frequency acquisition and frequency tracking. Frequency tracking can estimate and track the residual frequency offset that remains after initial frequency acquisition, and itself may be a two-step process including long term AFC and local (short term) AFC estimation.